Faith Erin Hicks’s new graphic novel, “The Nameless City,” takes place in an oft-conquered metropolis located at a key geographic crossroads. Drawn with sloping roofs and elegant symmetry, its architecture recalls ancient China, but in geopolitical terms the city is more a ­Jerusalem: claimed by many peoples, each with a different name for it. Natives call it the Nameless City, so as not to give legitimacy to the rule of their overlords. With this quiet act of rebellion at the ­center of the novel, Hicks insightfully examines the dynamic of conqueror and conquered. Along the way, she pulls the focus in tight to show how life-altering it can be when a young person learns the darker truths of his culture or country.

The book tells the story of Kaidu, a young member of the Dao ethnic group, the latest in a series of occupiers. Kai arrives in the Nameless City from the Dao homeland for military training, but in the first few stunning, action-filled panels, Hicks, who won an Eisner Award for “The Adventures of Superhero Girl,” reveals him as less a fighter than an explorer. Wandering the sometimes dangerous streets, he runs into Rat, a native who loathes the Dao masters. Though Rat is mistrustful, Kai’s natural curiosity wins her over. When Kai witnesses Rat’s skill at parkour, he asks her to teach him. Predictably, a friendship blossoms.

Hicks builds up that friendship with realistic care. Rat has a great deal to teach Kai, not just about how to fly across rooftops, but also what it means to be a member of a conquered class. Kai’s growing awareness of his own privilege is particularly resonant in light of America’s role, for better or worse, in current global conflicts. Fortunately, Hicks gets the message across without being particularly didactic.

The themes in “The Nameless City” are heavy — conquest, dictatorship, oppression — but young readers who grew up with “The Hunger Games” have certainly seen them before, and “The Nameless City” could have benefited from a more complex story. Still, neither Kai nor Rat is strictly heroic or villainous. They are still learning the rules of their complicated world. The adults in “The Nameless City” are not as well drawn, though Kai’s awkward relationship with the father he barely knows is touchingly handled. We also briefly meet a fascinating character called the General of All Blades when Rat stumbles upon a plot against him. The novel is the first in a planned trilogy, and readers will look forward to more of him.

The artwork is breathtaking, with its subtly shifting color, rendered by Jordie Bellaire, lending each panel a richness that appropriately reflects a multifaceted culture. In Hicks’s sweeping scenes of the city, as well as her respectful attention to invented details of architecture, armor and clothing, she avoids the pitfall of creating a “vaguely” Asian world that is insultingly monolithic. Many of the panels showcase the city’s beauty so intensely that readers will wish it were real. But Hicks doesn’t shy away from the darker parts of the city. While she doesn’t wholly delve into the distressing underbelly that is an unfortunate feature of any conquered land, her treatment of the native inhabitants’ anger and the struggles in their lives reflect our own world all too realistically.

Hicks excels at depicting movement — Kai taking a painful beating from his fellow Dao students, Rat’s gracefulness as she moves over the rooftops. But it’s the quiet images — Kai eating street food with his father or observing a nighttime festival — that are the most powerful, allowing the reader to take a breath and appreciate perhaps the book’s most important character: the magnificent city itself.

Sabaa Tahir is the author of “An Ember in the Ashes” and its sequel, “A Torch Against the Night,” which will be published in the fall.